Beauty Is In The Eye of The Beholder….

If you need to find our home, just look for the sheet of yellow….our entire big lot is filled with glorious dandelions. Thousands of them! No room for grass….they fill our little piece of earth like a packed subway during rush hour. It is truly a site to behold. The boundary lines to our neighboring lots are distinct and beautifully laid out as the dandelions know all too well, that “the other side” is not for them! Every time I turn the corner to our street and look alongside the beautiful landscape of our neighborhood, I gasp as the yellow brush takes power over anything else living that is planted and meant to be…

You see, we moved in to a foreclosed home last fall when the land here was dead and neglected for two years along with the house. We managed to give the house some serious CPR and after much hard work and patience, it is alive and thriving! As for our yard and landscape? Absolutely nothing but a thriving community of dandelions full of life and hope for a well fed spring that will surely fuel them through seasons to come.

It’s quite picturesque. Even my son and his friend picked me an arrangement of great proportions the other day! I initially thought dreadful things and grew increasingly more horrified each day they multiplied. Then yesterday, while I was out gazing in amazement at a patch of five-headed morphs that apparently got some of the grass fertilizer to spawn inch thick stems and five dandelion heads to their fullest bloom, I got to thinking…

Who put that horrible “weed stigma” on the precious yellow flower? Why? Because they grow on their own without any nurturing or care? Because they multiple by the tenfold in a blink of a tearful allergic eye? Because they will be the only living thing, aside from cockroaches, when this world comes to its fiery end? Well, I think it’s time to change that horrible identity! They deserve some well-earned respect, don’t they?

In our yard, they will be called “wildflowers”…

That is a perfect name seeing as they do all that a wildflower ought to do. They grow unconditionally, without end and look rather pretty in their bright sun drenched state. I know what you’re thinking…. “What about when they start to wilt and turn to flying ashes?” I would say to you, “ haven’t you seen a flower wilt and turn to it’s imminent death before?”

Dandelions don’t just wilt and look like debris from a trash can full of fruit loops gone badly. They transform into translucent floating fluff that to the human swollen drug-gazed eye, is somewhat poetic in its uniqueness. Fly away free wildflower!! You were beautiful when you thrived in the yards so neglected. Keep your generations flowing through the wind of time and change. Fly ol’ ye wildflowers! Fly!

And when you see a yard with these beautiful, bright, and bold looking blooms…